1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to medication, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for assisting medication, a medication box, and a medication storage container in a system for assisting medication, designed to assist medication in individuals who have to regularly take medications in daily lives.
2. Description of the Related Art
Patients with chronic illnesses and the elderly have to continue regularly taking medications on time in their daily lives.
However, the older people may have difficulty in following medication schedule (i.e., continuously taking medication on schedule) due to memory failure. For this reason, many regimens for systematically assisting medication have recently been developed, such that older people can readily adapt themselves to medication schedules and take an accurate dose of medication on time.
The regimens developed for assisting medication have turned out to be considerably effective when actually applied to the elderly.
Among the regimens for assisting medication, a representative regimen includes an apparatus for assisting medication, such as a medication bottle or box to which a clock and an alarm are attached. If a time to take a medication is set, this apparatus for assisting medication informs the medication user to take their medication through sound or voice at the set time. In addition to this apparatus, there are many apparatuses, such as dispensers, for automatically dispensing medications at a set time when the medication user has to take their medication.
Nevertheless, these apparatuses inform the user of the medication regardless of the situation of the user. For example, these apparatuses do not take into consideration the individual circumstances of users such as hearing-impaired people who cannot hear the signal given by each apparatus.
Further, these apparatuses merely recognize that a medication is taken when the user pushes down a specific button of each apparatus or opens a cover of each apparatus, and thus cannot check whether or not the user actually took a fixed dose of medication as well as whether or not the medication was actually discharged from the medication box.